Eric Natzke

Eric Natzke is a graphic designer who is considered one of the pioneers of computer generated art. The medium he uses to create his artwork is computer code. He has been known to push back the limits of his medium by taking risks with original and innovative methods. In result, he has discovered new approaches to linking art and design with technology and attempting to blur lines between technology and creativity. 

Natzke is a both an artist and a programmer, and he combines his design skills with his programming skills to create incredible works of digital art. He is concerned both with aesthetics and methodology in creating his work, and generates beauty through code and numbers. When he goes to draw something, Natzke does not pick up a pencil like most people. Instead, he goes to his Flash software editor and begins to write his own code. He writes up the codes he will use as the tools--the pencils--to create his art. And so he controls the path his art will eventually take at this very first stage of the process: the coding. In this stage of the process he shapes every single last detail in the coding before finally taking a step back to watch his code being executed. And this is how he creates his artwork.

More than anything, Natzke is obsessed with color. Color, along with nature, is one of his biggest inspirations and themes. When he codes his artwork, he does not only code his tools and the formations that result; he creates his own colors through coding. This is his process: he steps out of his studio into his garden and snaps a photo of a flower. He then sits down and, instead of relying on existing tools for creating digital color (traditional palettes are not sufficient for Natzke), he reaches directly into the source code. “Like a contemporary alchemist” he creates the colors from the photograph that he needs. In summary, he captures color schemes from his photography of nature and creates shapes and compositions via code.

Natzke explores abstract textures and uses nature as an inspiration to create similar impressions of it on a digital canvas. This can be seen by the works from his Colors of Nature exhibition (examples of which are shown throughout this blog post). He explains this inspiration in an interview, stating, “There are lots of similarities between just how nature likes to germinate a flower with so many different petals, and its repeated forms and structures. I look at it almost like they're algorithms. A flower is generated by a system of instructions. Similarly, that's how I look at code: as a system of formulas that I have control over that generate a resulting outcome, or a generative system.”

Armed with his numbers, codes, and processes, Natzke attempts to create bridges. His work serves as a bridge between impressionism and expressionism. His work is impressionist in its emphasis on color instead of the subject, and then expressionist in the dynamic form of his art. He is an impressionist by representing nature and an expressionist with his abstract style. Along with this combining of styles, Natzke also attempts to from a bridge between the physical and digital world--through color. He believes that there is a friction etween design and technology, and with his art he attempts to break that down. This is the central aim, even the central meaning, behind his work. 

I have only recently discovered the works of Eric Natzke, but since I first saw one his digital works, I was entranced. I could hardly believe that it was digitally done. The simulated texture of his art, which gave me the irrational urge to reach out and touch the screen even though I knew it was impossible to actually feel anything, look so much like painted brush strokes. I was simply speechless. His art is so beautiful and, in my opinion, so interesting in how it closely it resembles paint and seems to have a texture. I think this is my favorite part of Natzke’s art, and why I was so intrigued by it. 

Once I began to look more into him and how he develops his art, I only became more and more amazed. The fact that he creates all his own coding, even for each individual color he uses, was mind-blowing. I can’t imagine how much effort something like this must take, and this just proves how dedicated and skilled Eric Natzke is. What makes his art so magnificent  is that it is not just aesthetically pleasing, but the fact that he puts in all the effort to make it completely his own. This is why I believe his artwork is so beautiful.